Hey,

I know what you’re all thinking. It’s like I lazily put two screenshots next to each other and called it a day. This is true, I was in fact a lazy piece of shite. It’s okay, I deserve it.

Anyway, I have had itch.io installed on my computer for a while and I accumulated a lot of games even before I donated money to acquire the million games that came along with the bundle. This week I decided that I would play two games. The first game that I chose was a game that both my fiance and I could play (because I like when she plays the games I talk about). The first game, is a game that everyone can relate to because there had to be a moment in time that finding a pet a party was a higher priority than talking to people. The second, was a game that I felt was going strong in the beginning but as the game continued I realized that the main mechanic, RNG, was WAYYYYY too much for me to handle. This week I struggle to find animals in an abnormally large home in Pet the Puppy at the Party and battle against man eating traffic cones in Knights of the Card Table!

Pet the Puppy at the Party is a maze game that was published by Will Herring in August of 2017. It has a cool NAME YOUR OWN PRICE, so you can give whatever you feel like or nothing if you’re that kind of person.

Music by nick dimichele.

This is all the game sets out to tell you: You are at a house party, you don’t know anyone BUT! there is a legend that tells of a VERY GOOD PUPPO hiding somewhere in the house. The clock is ticking and you’re running out of small talk, can you find it?

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That’s it. JUST GO FIND THE DAMN PUPPOS.

Starting with 120 seconds on the clock, WASD moves and left-mouse opens doors, you begin to walk a labyrinth that is filled with partying people, bathrooms, closets and the eventual pup. The questions that came up early was, how do I find the pup? Well the pup every once and a while arfs! that is visible to the player to give a navigational hint. When you find the pup, you give it the best pet in the world and the game congratulates you and gives you + 30 seconds on the clock and you go AGAIN.

Pet the Pup is a nice, simple, short, fun game that everyone can enjoy. I put a good 1-2 hours into the game and I couldn’t find all 52 of the doggos, and the most I have ever found in one run is 12.

It’s a cute game that involves petting freaking dogs and ignoring people, man. It also has a cat and hes cute too.

Knights of the Card Table is an indie, dungeon crawling, card battler that released in 2018 under Ponywolf LLC, who also developed it. KotCT is on android, apple devices and PC. The game retails for a crisp fiver.

Delve into dungeons with assistance of a snarky, puny DM who introduces the tutorial and small hints on occasion. He exclaims that “the rearranging of cards” are the key to making it through. Cards line up, four at a time and it is your choice and how to proceed and you click to bring a card forward and activate the ability or fight it if it is a monster. As the game progresses the dungeons get longer and choices become more difficult but at the end of the day the difficulty lies within the ROLL of the DIE.

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When you want to attack an enemy, be it a skeleton, a vampire cat or a spooky skele-man, you need to roll a die for damage. Each unlock-able weapon has certain stats (like crit chance and negative damage rolls) and either a D4, D6 or D8. It’s a good concept that is bolstered by the choice of when to confront monsters.

There is also a mechanic that if you roll three of the same number; something cute happens. Three 1’s is full health, 2’s are extra die next roll and 4’s is an extra four damage.

Along with monsters of various types are health and buff cards that litter the dungeon, to the point of making the levels a breeze and for that matter BORING.

One of the aspects of the game that actually ruins the game is the RNG. Sometimes dungeons are 5-10 levels large and you role terribly and you end up dying. Of course you can spend some monies to continue, BUT you are not exempt from continuing to roll garbage numbers. I know that it is part of game to be able to roll bad but it happened more often that I feel it should have. Being in a dungeon that has 20 levels and you game over; it’s rage inducing. It wasn’t your fault that you rolled bad, it was the game and that is what makes it a real feel bad.

On the bright side there are many customization options, for instance, lots of weapons with different stats, characters and shields to make your chances of surviving dungeons higher. Alas, a lot of these choices are good fun but when it comes to game play, you just cannot overcome the RNG.

I would recommend the game because it is so cheap at $5 and you can play it on your phone. It’s fun but it wears thin kinda fast. It is tilting know that you are super deep in a large dungeon and you fail 6 rolls in a row.

I know, I uninstalled it out of complete frustration when I was on level 28 of 30 and rolled 9 bad rolls in a row. In-FUCKING-sane.